The excellent Radio Equalizer points to this fascinating and blistering column by Boston-area talk-radio host Howie Carr, in which he reports that New Hampshire defense attorneys have been asking potential jurors whether they listen to his show. The theory being, apparently, that talk-radio listeners are in favor of the radical notion of punishing criminals for hurting people and stealing things.

The defense also prefers Concord Monitor readers over Union-Leader readers. Understandable.

Carr suggests some juror questions of his own:

“Do you want to throw up whenever you read in a crime story that the victim and/or perp was ‘turning his life around?’ Or that he was about to get married to his ‘fiancee,’ the mother of his three children? Do you sometimes wonder whether the good father ever paid any child support? Do you roll your eyes when you hear that the perp was a ‘good boy’ or a ‘bookworm,’ or that he was ‘an aspiring rapper’ with ‘no enemies’? ”

The case that made Carr aware of the use of his program as a juror-screening tool involves the murder of a police officer, allegedly at the hands of a fellow who has had some prior brushes with the law.

His public defenders (that means we’re paying for them) are trying to empanel an O.J. Simpson-type jury. So they want my listeners O-U-T out of the jury pool, and what can I say, except this is a great honor to me and my audience. We must be doing something right if the bleeding hearts want us banned from the courtroom.

Carr writes like you expect a talk-radio guy to write, no? You can practically hear the AM radio crackling.